Enterprises and other entities may generate and collect a variety of different types of data, at least some of which may be critical to the operation of the enterprise. Such data may include, and/or be embodied in, financial information, business records, electronic mail, attachments to electronic mail, medical records, and personnel records, to name a few examples.
The unrecoverable loss of such data may be a matter of great concern for the enterprise. For example, the loss of business data and financial information may harm the competitive position or advantage of the enterprise. As another example, the loss of email and email attachments could expose the enterprise to legal or other liability. Moreover, insofar as email and email strings can provide a useful record and documentation of communications, decisions, and agreements, for example, the loss of such email could be problematic for the enterprise.
In view of the need to be able to reliably backup and recover important data, a variety of systems and methods have been devised which allow critical data to be backed up so that in the event that such a loss or compromise occurs, the data can be recovered. However, the vast amount of data generated and collected by enterprises has complicated backup and recovery efforts. One particular problem is that backup and recovery efforts typically require human intervention at various points during those processes.
However, human intervention increases the chances that an error will be introduced into the process, and the requirement for human intervention also means that the backup and/or recovery processes may not proceed as quickly as desired. This latter point may be of particular concern in situations where large amounts of data are required to be backed up and recovered and/or where the relatively quick backup and recovery of data is important to the enterprise.
Another aspect of the requirement for human intervention that is problematic is the fact that some backup and/or recovery processes, such as those that may be used for email, are based upon the assumption that the user has knowledge of certain prerequisites to those processes. That is, the user must have a certain level of knowledge in order that the backup and recovery processes can be executed. A user who lacks such knowledge cannot perform the required actions and, thus, cannot ensure execution of the backup and recovery processes.
As the foregoing suggest, conventional systems and processes may complicate and slow down the backup and recovery of data, while also increasing the likelihood of problems occurring during those processes. Thus, it would be useful for enterprises to have a way to speed up data backup and recovery, while also reducing the risk of problems occurring during those processes and freeing human resources for other tasks.